Interview: Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard, J. Robert Spencer and John Lloyd Young of Jersey Boys

Because Jersey Boys has become such a huge hit, it's easy to forget that the show arrived on Broadway last fall with no advance sale, little hype and plenty of doubters who expected yet another cookie-cutter "jukebox musical." That was before audiences experienced the irresistible story of the founding of the Four Seasons as played by a quartet of actors perfectly matched with their roles: J. Robert Spencer known as Bobby as brooding bass Nick Massi, Daniel Reichard as mastermind songwriter Bob Gaudio, Christian Hoff as tough-guy band founder Tommy DeVito and John Lloyd Young in a star-making turn as Frankie Valli. Individually, they give detailed, affecting performances. Together, they're a seamless ensemble with the power to whip an audience into a frenzy with the first notes of "Sherry." Just after Jersey Boys picked up eight Tony nominations—including Best Musical, Best Actor for Young and Best Featured Actor for Hoff—Broadway.com sat down with the foursome in the lobby of the August Wilson Theatre to discuss their on-stage chemistry—and find out how it feels to be treated like rock stars eight times a week.

Let's talk about the Tony Awards first. I'm sure you wish that all four of you could be honored.
Bobby: We feel like we are. [John and Christian] got nominated, but the show did too.John: And the only reason all four of us didn't get nominated is there aren't enough nominee slots.Christian: There are many people who deserve a category at the Tonys, like Ron Melrose, our music director and conductor.John: There used to be a category for that, but it was boring to TV audiences. The outside world doesn't understand the importance of a music director, but we do because ours put the four of us, who have a perfect blend, together without ever having us in the same room. He's a genius.

Why should John and Christian win Tonys?
Bobby: They're both just wonderful. There's a lot of flash involved in this type of genre, and these guys deliver. This is John's gig. He's Frankie Valli. He's got to sing 27 songs.

Wow, is it really that many?
John: Yeah, and there are about 35 songs in the show. But speaking of flash, look at Bobby, who is playing the self-professed Ringo of the group. Bobby has all these nuances as an actor that would be noticed in a play but not in a musical. In many ways, Bobby had to do more than any of us because his character wasn't around to talk to the writers. [Massi died in 2000.] The character he built is not on the page of the script. Frankie is Frankie Valli of the Four Seasons. Tommy DeVito is the brawn of the group, the one who will punch someone in the jaw to get things going. Bob Gaudio is the genius writer, but Nick was the enigma. And because he plays it so quietly and without ego, Bobby is the unsung hero.Bobby: Thank you, John.Daniel: I knew that the Tony nominations would not change the dynamic among the four of us. People ask if we get along, and of course we do, but we get along on stage really well. I rely on them and they rely on me. We're a team, and you take comfort in that when you go out there. You might feel, "Was I overlooked in the Tony nominations?" But then you just think, "I get to enjoy all the gifts of this experience." That gives me strength and motivation to keep going because we continue to learn and grow in this show. You realize that people are nominated for a variety of reasons, so I'm trying not to get too into it.John: As a nominee, if I lose, am I a loser? No. First of all, our show is the winningest show this season. Everybody loves us.Daniel: The big one, as [director] Des [McAnuff] always says to us, is Best Musical, but even if we don't win, it doesn't change the fact that the show is successful. We certainly hope to win because of what it represents. This show came in with no press…Christian: With baggage! No stars, no advance…John: When we started previews, they were making maybe $6,000 a day, but after five previews, the ticket sales shot through the roof and have been there ever since.Christian: We've earned the respect of the audiences, and you can't beat that. Second to that is the respect of our peers, and we've got that too.

What's the key to your chemistry?
Daniel: It's just there.John: I read somewhere that Des has made it a signature to stage male bonding. He certainly runs rehearsal like football practice.Daniel: Smacking butts… [Laughs.]John: It feels like a team. Also, because of the way our show is structured, Rashomon style, we each carry a part of the narration. We're independent but also interdependent. We all have an equal share.Daniel: The writing is the core foundation of our chemistry because the specific nature of each relationship is defined, and they each evolve.Christian: Even though we're spanning 20, 30 years of the relationship of four guys, from the minute each character is introduced he's same person he is in the finale, and people identify with that. So we get to be those characters while we're on The Ed Sullivan Show, while we're on American Bandstand, while we're in a hotel with hookers… [Laughs]Bobby: …getting high.

But the way the four of you perform the songs is also key. Did that come together right away?
John: I didn't do the show in La Jolla, and the other guys already had an established relationship. When I came in and we started singing, we instantly had that blend—the four voices together and the four personalities together. The relationships are there on the page so a new actor can come in and fit in.Christian: But a new actor could also come in and screw it up royally if it wasn't the right fit. The show is a success not only because of the writing but also because of what we bring to it.

Which of you is the most like your character?
Bobby: I am.Daniel: I agree.Bobby: I am like Nick in so many years. With my years of womanizing—before I was married! [Laughs.] With my years of teaching myself music, writing songs and harmonies, being a loner, enjoying scotch. Day by day I go, "I am really, really similar to this guy." When I talked to his wife and his sons and daughters and nephews and nieces, I just thought, "Wow, that's me."

I'd guess that Christian is the least like his classic Jersey-guy character, Tommy DeVito.
Christian: Yes and no. My persona is different, like night and day. But I'm very much like him in other ways: stubborn, opinionated, driven, full of beans. The lovable guy who's got the edge but manages to get what he wants out of any situation even if it's by sheer brute force or will.Daniel: You're a very determined person.Christian: And committed. I would take things on if I had to. Unfortunately, Tommy had to learn the hard way about that. When Frankie and Bob got their side deal [sharing royalties on recordings], he said, "I have to look out for myself." His street smarts kicked into high gear, which involved gambling.John: Luckily, that part is acting. The gambling addiction is not something you have in real life. [Laughs.]

You're not much like Frankie, are you, John? Frankie Valli didn't go to Brown, for one thing.
John: No, but my mother's side was Italian-American from Queens, so when I see Frankie Valli at these events, it's like it's Grandpa Mike. I believe that good casting is casting of an essence, and then the actor's job is to build up or whittle away parts of themselves that don't fit what's on the page. For all of us, I would guess, the drive to become successful when you're an unknown actor is an easy thing to relate to when you're playing a rock musician who is trying to become successful. Frankie doesn't stop fighting from the moment he walks on stage, and I can relate to that.

How about you, Daniel? You've really gotten to know Bob Gaudio, haven't you?
Daniel: Oh yeah, and I continue to. He wrote me the cutest e-mail on Tuesday after the Tony announcements, just one line, quoting a line of mine from the show: "Dear Daniel, None of this could have happened without you." It was very sweet.Bobby: Geez, I got no e-mail from him at all. That's just great! [Laughs.]John: Massi is looking down on you. He's very proud.Daniel: It's the same kind of thing the rest of the guys are saying. I am so not like my character in the show, but I am at the same time. It's bizarre. If they had had another actor play the part, it could have gone very differently. I'm an open-hearted person, and I think that's what I bring to the character. Because that's his function in the four—a person who has a different edge, partially based on his background. I am not a businessperson at all, which is at the top of the things you'd say about Bob Gaudio, but I am incredibly driven and determined. I came to New York with no contacts and I've managed to work nonstop as an actor. So I have that drive to achieve, which is what Bob Gaudio brought to the group. They all had ambition, but he made it happen in a way that it would not have happened without him. He's more soft-spoken and reserved than I am. He says, "I was never comfortable in the spotlight," and I'm quite comfortable in the spotlight.

OK, let's play a little game. I want you to give me one word that best describes each of your co-stars. First, Christian.
Bobby: Love. He's all love.John: Integrity.Daniel: Successful.

OK, what about Daniel?
Bobby: Genius. [Laughs.]John: Affable.Daniel: Are you calling me laughable?
[Laughs.]Christian: I would say that Daniel is big-hearted.

Bobby?
John: Vulnerable.Christian: Bobby is... [Long pause.] Underestimated. Actually, passionate is better. Underestimated is a by-product of circumstances. Passionate is your word.Daniel: Yeah, passionate. I'd say….[Long pause.]Bobby: Why do you guys have to think about this?Christian: Because you're complicated.Daniel: I'd say intense. [Murmurs of agreement.]John: You know what's interesting about searching to say something about him? That's exactly what Bob and Frankie say about the real Massi. They couldn't find an easy way to describe him.

And finally, John…
Daniel: Focused.Christian: Driven. Driven is another by-product of circumstances.John: That sounds kind of Alpha.Bobby: I was going to say focused. The everyday John is easygoing. The stage John? Focused.

John, have you felt extra pressure? This is an ensemble show, and yet…
John: It's in the subtitle: "The Story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons." I felt extreme, intense pressure from the minute I got the offer to do the part, but it's evolved. The first pressure was, how the ell do I do this?

You didn't have a huge background in musicals, either.
John: I had done some small musicals, but I had never had a lead and never had to sing like this except joking around at a karaoke bar singing like Tina Turner for fun. So I had a lot of work to do in the four months before we started rehearsal. Also, they had done it before, and Des has a reputation as a very tough director, and I was making my Broadway debut. So I was a wreck preparing, doing more than I needed to just so I'd be in a place where I could fit in as well as possible when I got to rehearsal.Christian: Which he certainly did.

Did you know right away that audiences were going to go crazy for this show? Did they go nuts at the first performance?
Bobby: Yeah. I had told John from the get-go, "Get ready, man." If you're an actor, you've done a curtain call; you've heard applause. Now fast forward to the final dress rehearsal on Broadway, which might as well have been opening night; we were so ready to rock and roll. We took our bows. Christian… [He makes a cheering noise.] Daniel… [Cheering noise.] Me… [Cheering noise.] Then John… [Makes a noise that's twice as loud.] And John, literally, was like this… [A huge, shocked grin.]Christian: Put a word to that expression you just made.Bobby: [Makes a loud siren sound directly into the tape recorder.]John:: That was the one element I didn't know until that first preview. I was chomping at the bit the last few weeks because I knew my performance wouldn't be complete until I felt what it was like to have an audience reaction.Bobby: To answer your question, yes, we all knew it was going to be a hit. Did I think it was going to be what it has become? I had no idea. It's gone beyond a hit. And that's rare on Broadway. You've got your Les Miz and your Rent, and as an actor, you think, "Man, I want the next show like that."John: We've done even better. You can take certain people to Rent and they say, "What is this?" You take certain people to Les Miz and the husbands are bored out of their minds. This show appeals to everybody, including the husbands, which is the hardest demographic. Broadway people market their shows to women because men don't care about Broadway. They get pissed off when their wives drag them to something. We are not only a hit, we've become a cultural phenomenon. Married men who watch football asking for your autograph at the stage door? That never happens.

What's your favorite fan encounter? I read on your blog, John, that Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban sent an orchid backstage.
John: A recent one was when Eric McCormack from Will & Grace said hello as we were signing programs to raise money for Broadway Cares. We had auctioned off a dinner with us, and I just found out that he almost won it; he was bidding it up until they ran out of time. Bruce Willis has been twice.Bobby: Joan Allen has been here three times. She's amazing. Calvin Klein has seen the show twice.John: And President Clinton and Chelsea were here last night.Bobby: I really enjoy the fans who are moved to tears by the show. When we come up from under the stage at the end for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame number, you can really see the audience and I saw this woman the other night lifting her glasses and wiping her eyes. One night there was this guy in the student seats and the moment we started "Sherry," he started crying and shaking.Daniel: We met a lot of the fans when we did six or seven weeks of Broadway Cares signing. We'd come out to the lobby after almost every show and sign autographs for 25 minutes, which was exhausting because you have to talk more than you do at the stage door, but we got to see the feelings of the fans in more detail. One woman cried the whole time. The thing that's so great about the show is that people truly connect to it. It's not just the music, it's the soul of the show that they love. It's why people come over and over.John:We certainly have something special, the four of us. The audience gets to watch us go through our whole career and take their journey with us. And they love us! The 60-year-old women feel like our mothers and their 30-year-old daughters want to marry us. And the fathers relate to the story of a bunch of guys bonding.Christian: Struggling together, yeah. The humanity of the show is what I'm so proud of.John: I also think that because we address the audience directly, they're our confidantes. The audience gets to know Tommy DeVito because Tommy shares his intimate thoughts with them and asks for their support in his point of view. Then Bob does it, then Nick does it, then Frankie does it. The audience leaves the show having really taken a peek into our innermost desires as characters, but they've also gotten to know us as actors.

You're not sick of the songs yet?
Bobby: Oh no. I have done shows—and I'm sure you guys have, as well—where you go, "God, here comes that damn song again!" or "Here comes that scene…" You're backstage playing poker until you've gotta go on and move that chair. But in this show, there's not one moment when I go, "Here comes that damn scene." First of all, it flies at such an accelerated pace. It's like the guy sitting with his beer in a recliner, clicking the remote control. People's attention spans are like that, and it works in our favor because that's how this show works. It just cooks.Christian: It's like a train. It leaves and you're off.John: You jump on the locomotive and you get off when it stops.Christian: There are some local stops and it switches to express here and there. But there's an emotional reality no matter how fast we go. It's not a show where we have to feel guilty at the end for them standing up. What they're standing up for at the end is the emotional experience they've had. We feel pride because we've put ourselves out there.

How are you protecting your voices—particularly you, John?
John: Whatever awards or accolades I get, 50 percent of it is shared by my voice teacher, Katie Agresta, who is the best in the world at what she does. She developed a technique in the 70s when rock singers would come to her losing their voices on the road. She figured out how to fix it. She's worked with Cyndi Lauper, Jon Bon Jovi, Annie Lennox, Steven Tyler, Twisted Sister. This singing isn't even close to being as abusive as Twisted Sister! She worked with me for four months before we opened and she's been with me every week since then. She can give you a Teflon throat if you listen to everything she says.Christian: We have a responsibility to do our job in the show and we all have our ways of doing that. It's mainly about building up stamina. We all rest in different ways.

You spend so much time together. How do you avoid getting on each other's nerves?Bobby: There are times we bitch at each other, but it's the bitching that brothers would do. There's stuff I've said to Christian and he's said back to me but it's not a big deal; it's like brothers. Daniel and I have had a couple of "pick pick pick" but it's a brother thing.John: I have another theory about this: When I was in college, I had a dorm that was built in the 60s based on prison design so it would be riot-proof. You couldn't fight with anyone because you hardly ran into anyone. Little Women, the last show here, had a lovely meeting room with a coffeemaker. Now the entire basement is full of our elevators, so we don't have room to socialize. We can't interact with each other so we can't get into fights. We go to our dressing rooms and do our job onstage and get together at events.

Speakng of events, I see photos of the four of you all over town. Do you enjoy doing extra performances?
Bobby: Let's be honest: We're really whipped, but then you say, "Hey man, this is a once in a lifetime roller coaster ride. Kick it up."John: Yesterday afternoon, we had a police escort to perform at the CBS presentation at Carnegie Hall during intermission. Last night we hung out with Bill Clinton.Bobby: The week before, we were at Carnegie Hall performing with Marvin Hamlisch and a 70-piece orchestra. Liza was there, Elaine Stritch was there, Kid Rock. I said, "Let's really enjoy this because how often do you get to play Carnegie Hall?" Hello, yesterday, we were back.John: You know you've made it when Carnegie Hall feels like your high school auditorium.

See Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard, J. Robert Spencer and John Lloyd Young in Jersey Boys at the August Wilson Theatre, 245 West 52nd Street. Click for tickets and more information.